Flushing Meadows, Queens, September 8, 2007 - I'm not a huge tennis fan, but I'll tend to watch a few U.S. Open games on TV every year. Some years we even go watch some matches live (and we invariably get rained on). This year, Sue unexpectedly scored some free tickets (good seats, too) to watch the women's final between Justine Henin and Svetlana Kuznetsova, and by some miracle the weather was perfect. (Kuznetsova needed an even bigger miracle, as Henin dominated 6-1, 6-3.)

We had taken a taxi to the tennis center - it's only about 3 miles from our house, and while we could have taken the subway, that's an indirect route that would have taken far longer. After the match, we walked back to where the taxi dropped us off, thinking that there would be cabs to hail, but unfortunately for us, there were only pre-hired car service cabs there. So rather than walk a good way back to the subway, we figured we'd may as well continue walking home, even though it was about 10pm. Other than a scary lonely section of the park between the last parking lot and the bridge over the Grand Central Parkway that dumped us back onto the streets of Forest Hills, it was a nice walk and a beautiful night for it. Took us about an hour.

(The US Open was held at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills until 1977. The club is less than a block from our house; we would have had a much easier walk home had it still been held there...)

I still plan on someday buying a tennis racket and hitting the ball around with some friends, but I also need to start running again, clean out my basement, take Spanish and French classes, and learn to play the ukulele. That's right, the ukulele. My parents shipped me one from their vacation in Hawaii. Very funny.